8/19/2005

From: Auction House
You know about Jack Abramoff's lobbying for Indian casino interests. But what about his work on behalf of Saudi petro-billionaires accused of ties to terrorist financing networks? As the Washington Post reported on Friday, in the first nine months of 2002, Abramoff collected $12.2 million in fees from Indian tribes and additional sums from the General Council for Islamic Banks and other clients while working for Greenberg Traurig.

So what's the General Council for Islamic Banks?

Aug 16, 2005 -- 11:50:37 PM EST
Shortly after 9/11, Abramoff signed up as a lobbyist for this consortium of banks that operate according to sharia, or Islamic law. According to the National Journal (Aug 31, 2002), the consortium was created after the attacks as President Bush began cracking down on terrorist financing. Abramoff's job was to spread the word about Islamic banking practices and to refute claims that Islamic banks sheltered money used for terrorist networks. And if anyone needed a good PR man, it was the chairman of the General Council for Islamic Banks, a Saudi businessman named Saleh Abdullah Kamel estimated to be worth in the neighborhood of $ 2.6 billion, who was quickly the subject of intense government scrutiny over his possible ties to terrorist activity

You see, Kamel is also the chairman of Dallah al Baraka Group (DBG), which is suspected of having ties to al Qaeda and other extremist groups, and he was also the co-founder and large shareholder of Al Shamal Bank in Sudan, Osama bin Laden's bank of choice from 1983 onward. He was listed as being one of the seven "main individual sponsors of terrorism" in this report by French researcher Jean-Charles Brisard submitted to the UN Security Council in December 2002. (You might remember that Omar al-Bayoumi, who befriended and provided money to two of the 9/11 hijackers, was once an assistant to the Director of Finance for Dallah Avco, a DBG company that works with the Saudi aviation authority. And the WSJ has reported that the United States believes the Dallah al-Baraka Bank, another DBG company, was also used by al-Qaeda.)

Kamel's name also appeared in the "Golden Chain," a roster seized by Bosnian authorities in Sarajevo in March 2002 listing Saudi donors to bin Laden and his associates; and he was named as a defendant in two Sept. 11th related lawsuits